Mary Quinn: "I stomped on his head as hard as I could"

"After we had been exposed to crossfire and shelling going on around us for 45 minutes, they moved us back up onto the barricade where they were hiding. By now the government soliders were close enough that there was shouting back and forth between the terrorists and the soldiers, apparent negotiations trying to go on.

"They threatened to shoot two of them but did not actually shoot two people then.

"The lead terrorist grabbed me by the back of my shirt, he shoved his Kalishnikov gun against my spine and marched me down in front of him, out across the open field - everyone else was back on the barricade.

"We went a few hundred yards, up and over the next barricade, walking towards the government soliders.

"A short distance past the second barricade I suddently felt him lose his grip on me. I turned and saw that he had fallen on the ground. He groaned, and I realised he had been shot.

'Grabbed the barrel of the gun'

"At that moment I decided to make a run for the government troops. But I knew that he was trying to get up and could potentially shoot me as I was running away from him so I made the decision to get the gun from him before I started running, and at that point I grabbed the barrel of the gun.

"He was holding the other end of it, and we had a tug-of-war on this gun for a short time. At that point I kicked him in the face trying to weaken his grasp - that didn't work.

"I then took my right foot, and stomped it down on his head as hard as I could and used his head to give me leverage to pull even harder and then broke his grip.

'Ran like hell'

"Then I just ran like hell towards the government soldiers and carrying the gun, just as I got close to the next barricade, I threw the gun down, realising - or just guessing - it was government soldiers, not wanting to run at them with a gun pointing to them, so I threw the gun down.